Recipes and news from the makers of Zest Recipe Manager

Roasting has to be the simplest way to bring out the delicious flavour of vegetables: a bit of oil, seasoning and time is all it takes. But it’s also becomes a bit predictable, so it’s nice to have a few simple flavour combinations up your sleeve to mix things up. This simple side is one such combination: the flavours of orange and fennel add a slightly sweet and bitter zing to gently roasted carrots. It’s best cooked slowly in a low oven, so makes the perfect accompaniment to my Moroccan Lamb Shoulder Tangia (or indeed another slow roast).

Slow Roasted Orange and Fennel Carrots

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 1 hour 45 mins

Total time: 1 hour 50 mins

Serves: 4-6 (as a side)

A different take on roasted carrots that’s a perfect side for slow-roasted meat.

Ingredients

12 baby carrots

100ml orange juice (from 1 large orange)

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

2 teaspoons olive oil

salt and pepper

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 150°C.

Pour the orange juice and olive oil into a small oven proof dish, then add the carrots and toss to coat. Sprinkle with fennels seeds and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Cover tightly with foil and roast for 1 hour. At this point take the cover off, toss the carrots in the juice and return to the oven for another 30-45 minutes. The carrots should be mostly tender (with just a little bite) and the juice reduced to a sticky sauce.

Although they can be nondescript from the outside, the Hammams (public baths) of Marrakech are a well known tourist attraction (and, I can attest, well worth a visit!). The part most tourists don’t get to see, though, is what happens next door to (or underneath) these baths in the fires that heat the rooms and waters. If you pay these a visit you might be surprised to find several tall terracotta pots stacked among the coals throughout the day. These pots are known as tangia, and inside you’ll find a dish of the same name. The constant heat of the fires is ingeniously harnessed to produce a fragrant stew of lamb on the bone, cooked slowly over many hours until meltingly tender.

What a great way to cook! It’s so simple that tangia is known as a bachelor’s dish. All you need to do is take your pot to the markets in the morning to gather your lamb and preferred mix of spices from your favourite stalls, top up with some water and seal before handing over to the fire keeper to cook throughout the day. Come dinner time you swing back by the baths and pick up a perfect stew! Of course I don’t have the same luxury here in Sydney, but a good cast iron dish (with tight fitting lid) and low oven make an admirable substitute for the real tangia.

Finding an authentic recipe is not easy, and I suspect it varies quite a bit in reality in any case. I took some tips from the blog The View From Fez, which had the most detailed description of the daily ritual I found. But I’ve modified the recipe quite a bit by using a whole lamb shoulder (which is easier to come by in my experience), some butter rather than all olive oil (in Morocco they would actually use smen, a fermented butter), and a different treatment of herbs and spices. If you have a favoured ras el hanout (Moroccan spice blend) then by all means use that in place of most of the spice in this recipe, though for fragrance and colour I’d still recommend additional saffron.

The result is a perfect winter dish: meltingly tender lamb in a fragrant spiced sauce with sweet chunks of garlic and onion. The sauce is thin but perfect to serve on cous cous which soaks up the goodness. Add plenty of parsley as a fresh contrast and enjoy!

Moroccan Lamb Shoulder Tangia

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 4 hours

Total time: 4 hours 10 mins

Serves: 6

Be transported to Marrakech for the night with this delightfully simple, meltingly tender lamb stew!

Ingredients

1.6kg lamb shoulder, bone in, trimmed of excess fat

25g butter

1 small preserved lemon, skin only, roughly chopped

1 1/2 tablespoons ground cumin

1 tablespoon ground coriander

2 teaspoons paprika

small pinch saffron

10 whole cloves garlic, peeled

1 onion, chopped into 6-8 large chunks

1 tablespoon olive oil

salt to taste

For the cous cous:

2 cups instant cous cous

2 cups water

1 bunch parsley, roughly chopped

1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 150°C.

Add the spices, preserved lemon, garlic, onion and water to an oven dish with a lid (a cast iron dutch oven is ideal). Coat the lamb with olive oil and plenty of salt, then place on top of the other ingredients.

Cook for 3 1/2 to 4 hours, when the lamb pulls apart easily. Remove from the oven and skim and excess oil from the sauce with a spoon (a little remaining fat is OK, it will combine nicely with the cous cous). Set the lamb aside to rest while you make the cous cous.

Place the cous cous in a large bowl. Boil the water and pour over the cous cous, then immediately cover and allow to stand for 5 minutes to cook. Remove the cover, season with 1 teaspoon of salt and separate the grains by stirring with a fork. Add the parsley and stir through to mix.

To serve line each bowl with a layer of cous cous, top with chunks of lamb, onion and garlic then pour over a generous help of sauce to soak in. Garnish with additional parsley.

Frittatas are a such a wonderfully easy way to feed guests. They can work at any meal, cook quickly, and the eggy base can take on so many flavours. In this case we have a triumvirate of taste: a sweet leek base, a fresh basil hit all laced with a little luxury: saffron. I know these gorgeous red threads are ridiculously expensive, but if handled correctly you only need a tiny bit to permeate an entire dish with their wonderful, unique flavour. The key is to steep the threads in warm liquid: I usually use water but opted for milk here for a little extra creaminess. Just look at the colour!

This pinch of threads is only about a quarter of a tiny packet, less than $2 worth, and the flavour was amazing!

A few tips for this frittata:

I’ve included fried potato to turn this into a meal of its own. With a side salad, and perhaps a little bread, this makes a perfect lunch. To simplify the recipe (and cut the cooking time) you can leave out the potato and you still have a wonderful breakfast or side.

If you’re really in a hurry you can cheat further and mostly cook the frittata on the stovetop, almost like an omelet, then transfer to the grill to brown the top. It will cook in just a few minutes!

Always remove a frittata from the oven when it is slightly underdone as it will continue to cook in the hot pan. If you overcook it the eggs dry out and ruin the texture.

This is a versatile dish, so don’t be afraid to experiment!

Leek Saffron and Basil Frittata

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 40 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients

2 leeks, halved lengthwise then sliced into 1cm pieces.

2 waxy potatoes, diced into 1cm cubes

6 eggs

1/4 cup milk

Pinch of saffron

Small handful basil, finely chopped (reserve a few leaves for the top of the frittata)

50g butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Preheat oven to 180°C.

Heat milk to just below boiling and add saffron threads. Allow to stand and infuse while you prepare the other ingredients.

Melt 35g butter with 1/2 a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan over a low heat. Fry leeks gently, stirring regularly, until translucent and tender (about 10 minutes). Set aside.

The in-laws’ fig tree is in full season now and we are spoiled with an abundance of beautiful fresh fruit. I decided that I should use some in a cake for a change, and had all sorts of ideas lined up before I hit the fridge … and saw we had almost no butter (gasp!). Leaving aside how we could ever be so lax as to let this happen, the problem was compounded by the fact that this was on Good Friday and the shops were closed!

Luckily, just a few weeks before, I had baked my first ever yoghurt cake: my Zest Test of the London Bakes Lemony Yoghurt Cake. Yoghurt and olive oil to the rescue! My recipe, though heavily based on this original, is tweaked to be slightly less sweet and more structured so it can accommodate the figs. The idea to throw in a bit of rosemary came from this amazing looking Honey and Rosemary Upside Down Fig Cake on Delicious Everyday. So with thanks to my fellow bloggers for their ideas, this Fig and Rosemary Yoghurt cake was born!

The results are gorgeous. Just like the original Lemony version on London Bakes this cake is amazingly moist and moorish, and the hint of rosemary laced through works brilliantly. It’s one of those little additions that delights and surprises on first taste — people will be asking you what is in this cake! 🙂

Fig and Rosemary Yoghurt Cake

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 50 mins

Total time: 1 hour 5 mins

A moist and moorish cake topped with delicate figs and laced with a rosemary surprise.

Ingredients

175g caster sugar

2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves

125g almond meal

50g plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

180g greek or other natural yoghurt

120ml extra virgin olive oil

2 large eggs

For the top:

4 figs, trimmed and halved lengthwise

2 tablespoons brown sugar

To serve:

Fresh figs, quartered (optional)

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Grease and line a loaf tin with baking paper (I recommend using a piece large enough lay right across the tin hanging out two sides so you can lift the cake out).

Add the caster sugar and rosemary to a large mixing bowl. Mash together with your fingertips to infuse some rosemary flavour in the sugar.

Add the almond meal, flour, baking powder and salt and mix well.

Whisk the eggs and add them to the mixture along with the yogurt and olive oil. Stir until thoroughly combined.

Pour the batter into the lined loaf tin, then arrange the fig halves, cut side up, on top of the cake.

Bake for 30 minutes, then quickly remove from the oven to top each of the fig halves with a pinch of brown sugar before returning to bake until browned and cooked through, roughly another 20 minutes.

When done carefully remove the cake from the tin (it can stick a little, so run a knife along the edges) and cool on a wire rack for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Recipe

I don’t bake all that often (Jane certainly has that covered), and when it comes to cakes I’ve stuck to the pretty traditional butter, sugar, eggs and flour formula. But I’ve always been intrigued by yoghurt and olive oil based cakes, so when I came across this Lemony Yoghurt Cake recipe from London Bakes I stashed it away for later reference.

My opportunity came when Jane bought home a beautiful, weighty pomegranate with no plan to use it in mind. A little naughty, because this pom was imported from the US, but it was a stunner. (The season starts soon enough in Australia so you can hang in until then if you want to buy local.)

My Tweaks

I made a couple of tweaks to this recipe. The major one, no doubt, was turning it from a lemony cake into a limey one. Now I know this sounds terrible as a name, particularly to the English (sorry, London Bakes!) but I had a hunch the flavour would work well and stand out. Based on Kathryn’s tip on the original recipe I also increased the zest, using some lemon plus two limes (just check the name of this blog after all!).

My other tweak is pictured above: garnishing with a few crushed pistachios along with the recommended pomegranate. Certainly not necessary but I think it adds nice colour, flavour and texture!

Challenges and Tips

The recipe was clear and easy to put together, even easier than a more traditional cake. The batter is quite wet so easily spread into the tin. The only challenge I had was getting it out afterwards! I used a greased, non-stick tin and lined the bottom. Unfortunately, because the cake edges are quite sticky, one corner stuck and broke on removal! Next time I’ll use a better lining as you can see Kathryn does in her original post.

Verdict

Win. This cake came out super moist but not too heavy, laced with beautiful fragrant lime. It doesn’t rise too much and even sinks a little when it cools as Kathryn warns. It’s right on the edge of too moist I’d say, so I might try a little more flour next time just as an experiment. But the proof is in the eating and Jane and I (with a little help from Miss One) completely demolished this cake. It didn’t last long enough for any visitors to even see it, so it’s lucky we have photo evidence!

This recipe has everything: spices and nuts, sweet and sour, moisture and crunch. And yet it’s simple to throw together and easy to experiment with! I’ve settled on koftas with fresh flatbreads as my favourite combination, but you could easily have these as burgers or mouth watering meatballs! The secret to a good kofta, as I picked up from Tessa Mallos’ Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook, is lots of parsley. A whole bunch may seem like overkill but I find it complements the rich lamb mince perfectly.

If you have the time do consider making your own bread to go with these, it makes a world of difference. For a quick midweek meal choose a very thin wrap or small pita pockets so the bread doesn’t overwhelm the dish. Or just go full caveman: ditch the bread and wrap the koftas with the lettuce!

Start with the onion jam. Warm a tablespoon of olive oil in a medium saucepan over a low heat. Add the onions with a pinch of salt and pepper then cover and cook slowly, stirring regularly, to completely soften the onions. After 25 minutes remove the cover and add the vinegar, then cook down for a further 5 minutes.

While the onions are softening you can start preparing the lamb. Combine the lamb, parsley, spices and pine nuts in a bowl, season with salt and pepper then mix thoroughly to combine. Form into koftas by taking large tablespoons of mince and shaping them in your palms. It helps to keep your hands wet and cup your palms to get the right shape.

Warm a tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan over a medium to high heat then fry the koftas, turning to colour them all over. As the fat renders from the meat you should get a beautiful caramelised crust around the outside of each kofta.

Finally you can throw together the sauce by combining the yoghurt, lemon juice, zest, garlic, olive oil, mint and salt in a small bowl and stirring well. Garnish with an extra swirl of oil on top.

Serve the koftas with your favourite flatbread. Time to get your hands dirty: stuff your bread with one or more koftas, lettuce leaves and a helping of onion jam, then top with yoghurt sauce and dig in!

Firstly: an apology for such a long silence. It is for a very happy reason, though: in January Jane and I welcomed our first child, our beautiful daughter Ella! Climbing the learning curve as a new parent has taken some time away from cooking, but I’m getting right back into it now so expect to see more new material. So let’s get back to this Zest Test…

Recipe

Thanks to a steady supply of grapes making their way through our kitchen I’d been on the lookout schiacciata recipes. So when Jane brought home a second hand copy of Maggie Beer’s “Maggie’s Table” I was chuffed to find just what I was looking for. Even better, Maggie’s source was an Italian family recipe — always the best way to find out little tips that make a dish special. One such tip in this recipe is the method of infusing rosemary flavour into the oil used to make the bread, which is a wonderful way to add full flavour without spoiling the texture with tough rosemary leaves.

My Tweaks

The full recipe makes two breads with 1kg of grapes. With a mere 300g of grapes to work with I made just a single bread by halving the rest of the recipe. Although I could jam in a few more grapes (and would like to have) I think the full 500g would have been implausible!

As mentioned above, I love the use of rosemary infused oil, but the first time I made this recipe I found the flavour a little too subtle. So I increased the amount of minced rosemary from 1 tablespoon (in 90ml of oil) to 2 tablespoons. The end result was just perfect: the bread is permeated by aromatic flavour without being overpowered.

Finally, I cheated a bit at the kneading step, even though the recipe only calls for 5 minutes of work! (Did I mention my cute little 5 month old excuse for taking short cuts these days?). Knowing this is quite a sticky dough I kneaded it in the bowl, which is a little less effective but so much cleaner! The end result may have suffered slightly but I think it’s a worthy tradeoff.

Challenges and Tips

Kneading the grapes into the dough is tricky, but just do your best. If they get a little crushed that’s OK, they’ll release juices (read: flavour) into the dough. Just be aware that the dough will get stickier as you go. This is another reason that kneading the dough in a bowl makes life easier.

In fact, as I alluded to above, just fitting all the grapes in is a challenge. Just keep on pressing them in until you really can’t find a spare space! Having maximum, bursting sweetness in the end result is worth it.

Verdict

Just look at that bread and tell me your mouth isn’t watering! The smell of rosemary, fresh bread and charred grapes is amazing and the taste is even better. The bottom of the bread develops a divine crust covered in caramelised grape juice that is a perfect bitter foil for the sweet grapes. This is a simple bread to make — especially with my kneading short cut — and if there’s one thing worth making fresh it has to be bread!

Salsa verde — green sauce — defies any exact definition, as so many variations appear in different cuisines and regions. For my personal take on this classic I’ve aimed for a fresh and, yes, zesty sauce that really wakes up your taste buds! My favourite pairing is with barbecued red meat, particularly beef, but you can pair this sauce with anything from grilled fish to a rich casserole.

Credit for my introduction to this style of salsa verde goes to Jamie Oliver, and you’ll still see the influence of his recipe in my own. Take a look at a few recipes, experiment, and choose your own perfect combination!

Broad beans don’t make life easy. Unless you get them very young, early in the season, they require double-peeling to get to the tender and delicious part. I can’t be the only home cook that learned this the hard way — munching on tough skins the first time I cooked them! But the resulting fresh bean taste is worth it, and when I spend the effort to shell them I prefer to keep that fresh flavour using clean recipes. That’s what I’ve created here — a classic combination of fresh bean and mint with the accent of warm, lightly-whipped and salted yoghurt. This is a great way to start dinner, or to punctuate a meal between rich dishes.

Minted Broad Bean Soup with Hot Whipped Yoghurt

Prep time: 25 mins

Cook time: 10 mins

Total time: 35 mins

Serves: 6

A classic combination of fresh beans and mint enhanced by the addition of hot salted yoghurt.

Ingredients

250g shelled broad beans (about 750g-1kg of pods)

100mL water

1 bunch mint

2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil

100mL greek yoghurt

1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt (less if your salt is a finer grain)

2 teaspoons lemon zest

Instructions

To shell the broad beans, first bring a saucepan of water to the boil. Remove the beans from their pods and blanch for 30 seconds to loosen the inner shells. Allow the beans to cool then remove the tough skins by splitting with your fingernails.

Prepare a bowl of ice cold water.

Return the saucepan of water to the boil and add the peeled beans. Simmer for 4 minutes, then immediately strain and add the beans to the ice water to stop them cooking.

Place the beans in a small food processor with the mint leaves, olive oil and half of the water. Process until smooth, adding remaining water as necessary to get a smooth and silky texture. (The result should be a puree, not a thin soup.)

Spoon the puree into small serving cups or ramekins, cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to chill.

When the soup is almost chilled prepare the yoghurt topping. Add the yoghurt, lemon zest and salt to a small saucepan and warm over a gentle heat. Stir until the salt is dissolved and the yoghurt is hot (but not boiling).

Add the hot yoghurt to a bowl and whip using an electric whisk. This should produce a light, foamy layer on top of the warm yoghurt. (If you don’t have an electric whisk you could use the small food processor required earlier.)

Spoon a few teaspoons of the hot yogurt on each of the soups and serve immediately.

Notes

The bean and mint puree alone, with just a light seasoning of salt in place of the yoghurt, would make a great addition to a dish of red meat.

This is a pizza with a twist — of insanity! I love the combination of roasted pumpkin, persian feta and toasted pumpkin seeds. I’ve often used it (or variations, e.g. pine nuts) for salads, pastas and pizzas. Then the thought occurred to me that I could crank it up a notch by making a pumpkin pizza dough, and the Triple Pumpkin Pizza was born!

The insane aspect is this does take a lot more time to make, as you need to fully cook and puree some pumpkin before you can start making the dough. From zero to pizza you’re looking at a few hours of actual time — but not that much extra work. The pumpkin in the dough gives it a sweetness and softness that is unique, while still yielding a crisp bottom. With the added zing and bite of lemon and pepper on the feta this is a pizza of wonderful contrasts.

So sure, cheat most of the time and use a regular base. But you owe it to yourself to go full pumpkin every once in a while ;).

Keep 330g of your pumpkin, for the dough, in one large piece. Wrap tightly in foil, place on a baking tray and into the oven until cooked through, about 1 hour.

Meanwhile peel and cut the remaining topping pumpkin into a 1-1.5cm dice. Toss in 2 tablespoons of olive oil and season well with salt and pepper. Spread the pieces on a lined baking tray and add to the oven. Roast until almost cooked, about 25 minutes, then set aside until assembling the pizzas.

When the large chunk of pumpkin is totally soft, remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly. Discard the seeds and scoop the flesh out from the peel and into a small food processor. Process into a smooth puree.

Mix 50ml of tepid water with the sugar and dry yeast, and allow to stand for a few minutes so it starts to foam.

Sift the flour and 1/2 teaspoon of salt into a large mixing bowl. Add the pumpkin puree, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the yeast mixture, then use your hands to slowly bring the dough together. (Depending on the water content of your pumpkin you may need to add more tepid water, gradually, to bring the dough into a ball.)

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead well, for around 7 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Bring together into a ball.

Dust the bowl with a little extra flour, place the dough inside and cover with a damp tea towel. Prove for 1 hour, in a warm place, or until the dough has approximately doubled in size.

When the dough is ready, tip out onto a lightly-floured surface and knock the air out of it. Divide into quarters, one small ball for each pizza. (If you are not ready to make the pizzas yet you can wrap the dough well in cling wrap and refrigerate until required.)

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Add pizza stones to the oven so they are hot when the pizzas are placed on them.

Now prepare the toppings. Break the persian fetta into bite-sized pieces in a small bowl. Grate the zest from the lemon liberally over the feta. Season well with cracked pepper.

To make the dressing, first juice the lemon. Combine 50ml of lemon juice with 100ml of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Use 2 tablespoons of this lemon dressing to coat the spinach/rocket leaves.

Add the tahini and garlic to the remaining 100ml of lemon dressing and combine well to form the pizza sauce.

To assemble and cook each pizza, take one small dough ball and roll out into a base 1-2 millimeters thick. Carefully place the base on a hot pizza stone, spread thinly with sauce and scatter over pieces of cooked pumpkin and a generous quantity of pepitas.

Cook for 10-12 minutes, until the edges are brown and the bottom of the base is crisp.

Scatter the dressed spinach/rocket and feta over the cooked pizza and serve immediately.